They didn’t come after me, but that hair-raised-on-the-back-of-my-neck feeling is still with me no matter how hot I turn the shower up. Steam fills the room in that thick curling way it can only do on very cold days. It’s eerie and unsettling. Are there eyes on me now? A shiver passes through me at the thought.
I’m being paranoid, I tell myself. Nobody followed me. Nobody who matters even knows I exist. I run through the events after I left the cemetery. I walked for what felt like forever with noreal destination in mind. I just had to move. Block after block I slipped through the city, surrounded by life, and yet feeling drained of it myself.
When I tired myself out and started to become exhausted, I used my phone to grab a ride with a ride-share car that happened to be less than a minute away. My boss would have wanted me to have called one of his drivers, but I don’t want anything to do with him ever again.
The driver was a cool-looking guy who had red dyed hair. I looked at him closely, just in case. I’ve been doing that lately, not wanting to trust anyone. Not believing what my own eyes tell me. His car was pretty fancy, and he was dressed in a way that I could call timeless. Not the way I dress. He was wearing ripped baggy jeans and a vest over a black graphic t-shirt. He could have been in a 90s hacker movie, or an early two-thousands rave, or a twenty-ten… you get the idea. It’s strange what becomes classic, and what just becomes dated.
I think back to what happened next. It’s already starting to fade. It feels like I have to fight my brain for memory now. I have a feeling something important took place, but I don’t know what, and it’s not coming to me. It’s that horrible feeling, like when a word is on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t remember it.
I just sat back in that car and I did what I’m doing now, but in the shower. I wondered what I’m going to do. I thought Ted and I were going to get married. He hadn’t asked me, but our relationship was new and I was delusional enough to have planned it all out—without having told him a single detail, of course. Ted had no idea what our future was going to be, but I did. I’d already decided we’d have two boys and a girl. The boys would be Clark and Kent. The girl would be April. Ted would refuse to name his sons after Superman, but I planned to sneakit by him anyway. Maybe name the first boy Ken, and then the second one Clark. I have a thing for heroes. That’s what Ted seemed to me to be.
But that’s all over now. Those dreams were lowered into the ground today, and there’s nothing I can do to bring them back. There won’t be any justice for Ted. I know his brothers will try to find the killer, but all they’ll find is pain.
When I came home, my house didn’t feel like mine anymore. It was that same weird floating feeling but projected onto the walls I decorated myself. Did I ever really think ducks with little blue bows on their necks were cute? Or did I just see it in an old magazine and let a curator from the nineties make that decision for me?
I get out of the shower, almost entirely wrinkled, and I wrap myself in a towel. I know I should get dressed, but somewhere between my bathroom and the chest of drawers that is practically directly outside it, I get lost. I find myself wandering my apartment in aimless, small circles, cooling quickly from the shower.
This place does not seem like home anymore. I don’t feel like home anymore. I feel like a stranger to myself. I look around and I see places Ted once stood, things he touched, the picture of the silly frog that he laughed and laughed at. He only came here once, but I can picture him here as clearly as if he’d lived here with me for a lifetime.
Tears fog my eyes as I finally pull on a pair of flannel pajamas, then go and sit in the yellow chair by the window, and stare out of it until it is time for bed.
CHAPTER 2
Leo
We rendezvous back at the family home. It’s a big standalone old house in the historic part of the city where only people with trust funds and illicit sources of income can afford to live. The house was built in the Gilded Age, as Mark Twain put it, and is a big, hefty Romanesque Revival piece of architecture with enough space for a very large family to live. My brothers and I have always swum in the place. There will be even more room for activities now.
Teddy used to enjoy the spacious gardens, manicured to within an inch of their lives, with clever planting creating all manner of nooks and crannies to hide in. I always liked the walls. They are high and pointed and intruders have a devil of a time attempting to get over them.
Aiden and Luke are in the lounge, drinking. I join them, though I abstain from the whiskey because I suspect being clearheaded will be an advantage in times to come.
“The girl at the cemetery is called Ella Chick,” I tell my brothers. “She’s got a picture on her social media of her and Teddy together, going out somewhere. I believe they were dating.”
“A girlfriend?” Aiden says.
“He never mentioned her,” I say. “But yes.”
Luke swallows what remains in his glass angrily and stares out the window. I wonder if he knows something he is not saying. He and Teddy, being the youngest two and relatively close in age, were co-conspirators in many things that Aiden and I would not have approved of.
“Do you know something, Luke?”
Luke shoots an irritated glance at me. “The contents of my mind are my own,” he says. “If I knew anything that had anything to do with Teddy being fucking murdered, I would tell you.”
Aiden makes a calming motion at me with his hand. We don’t want Luke getting belligerent. He can be a monster when he is triggered, and this has the capacity to be one of his worst days.
“Fine,” I say. “If you do happen to remember anything, please do let us know at your earliest convenience.”
“He kept trying to get away from all this shit. We should have let him go,” Luke says.
“There’s no way out of this, and you know it,” Aiden replies calmly.
Luke gives him an annoyed, angry stare. The pecking order is not broken, but it is being challenged by my younger brother. Luke has found himself back in a position he hasn’t had since hewas very young, that of the youngest brother, and Aiden is being more controlling than ever because of our having lost Teddy.
Luke is rebelling against the closest thing we have to an ultimate authority, which is hilarious because Luke is 6′3 and an MMA fighter. Aiden is dangerous too, but in a different way. Less obviously physically intimidating, but smarter, and far more twisted.
I am immune to this dynamic to a certain extent because I have always been different. Colder, some say. More analytical. Less emotional. The typical sibling power plays never interested me.
“What ifIwant out of this?” Luke says. “Because I don’t want to follow him into the ground. We don’t know who the fuck did this. We have absolutely fucking nothing. And now people know that we can be hurt, they’ll be coming for all of us.”
